Menu

Happy Birthday Randy, Here’s Your Pink Slip!

by Kevin Kimmes

I’ve had some really crappy birthdays over the years. Don’t get me wrong, they weren’t all bad, but to set up today’s topic, let’s look at one of the bad ones.

The year before I met my wife, I spent my birthday in an Irish pub, by myself, because none of my friends felt like meeting me out to celebrate. I sat there for hours sucking down Jameson and Guinness waiting for anyone I knew to arrive, but no one ever showed. Did it suck celebrating my birthday alone? Yeah, it did. But, how would it compare to getting fired on your birthday? Not even close.

Enter Randy Wolf.

On Wednesday morning, the Brewers starter received his official release from the club after compiling a record of 3-10 in 24 starts. His 5.69 ERA is a career worst, and his WHIP of 1.574 is the highest since his rookie season in 1999, so the release wasn’t exactly surprising. What was surprising was the timing of his release. You see, today is Randy Wolf’s 36th birthday.

While many folks will tell you the move was overdue (just check out the response to the release on the team’s Facebook page), you have to feel for the guy at least a little bit. Think about it, you wake up and maybe have your favorite breakfast, go online and see who’s wished you birthday greetings, take a shower, and feeling refreshed head into work feeling good. But you’re not there long before you notice something feels off with your co-workers, and no sooner do you begin to try and sort this out than the boss calls you into the office and asks you to close the door. Your stomach drops out.

The next thing you know you’re getting the “We’ve decided to go in another direction speech” and all of your stuff, which was kept in your locker, has been haphazardly thrown in a box. Finally to add insult to injury (and as someone with a degree in management, I will never understand this next move), they wish you success in your “future endeavors”. Way to pad the blow, jackass!

To Randy’s credit, he seemed to roll with the punches pretty well:

“It’s pretty bad, but, you know, the way I look at it is that Day 1 of age 36 starts off on a bad note. It can only go up from here.”

We at Cream City Cables would like to wish Randy Wolf all the best in his future endeavors (sorry, couldn’t resist), and hope he was at least able to take some comfort in the fact that his release came with a sizable severance package. Oh yeah, and happy birthday!